The Craft Brewers Conference (CBC) is the only industry event that serves both brewpubs and packaging breweries. The Craft Brewers Conference and BrewExpo America® is presented by the Brewers Association, a recognized leader in the national and international brewing arena.

Stop by Booth #3202 and see how other Brewers utilize theMicrosoft Dynamics solutions in partnership with Tridea Partners to grow their businesses!

Moving to the cloud is big news. There is much discussion and confusion about what it means for craft beer businesses and what businesses need to do to take advantage of it.

In our new guide we’ll share the top 4 ways the cloud can benefit your craft beer business and why you should consider it.

Craft breweries run a challenging business. From sourcing quality yeast, malt and hops, to developing new and exciting recipes, to distribution and hospitality – they have to maintain uncompromised quality, control costs and run productive operations. Modern cloud technology makes it possible for craft beer companies to gain the intelligence, visibility, and control that enable them to produce top-quality beer.

As a leader in cloud technology and digital transformation, we’re here to help you get started in your cloud transformation process.

On a recent project our client a microbrewery wanted to bring data into Microsoft Dynamics GP from two different 3rd party products that they were using in their day to day business. The customer was using eOstar Route Accounting Software to manage their deliveries and Aloha POS for their Tasting Room Sales.

From eOstar the client was looking to bring in Journal Entries for their General Ledger as well as Bank Deposits to interact with the GP Bank Reconciliation module. We were pleased to find that eOstar had developed their own integrations to Dynamics GP. The client worked with their eOstar representative to coordinate the upgrade of the product to bring the eOstar GL and Banking Transactions into GP through the eOstar integration modules.

The customer also wanted to bring in the daily Sales of the tasting room from the Aloha POS system. This would allow Tender sales receipts to be recorded in GP and keep an accurate inventory of the tasting room items in Dynamics GP. We created a custom .net application using vb.net and eConnect to bring the SOP data into GP. The integration retrieved the Cash, Credit Card, Gift Card, Comp Tender Data items and line item Sales data from Aloha EOD files and created a SOP Invoice for each day. One of the challenges we had was how to handle the beer inventory in the tasting room as beer was sold by various pour sizes, by flights, kegs, and cases. We setup a unit of measure in GP for Ounces to keep track of the beer poured in the tasting room. We were able to use categories and descriptions in the Aloha item data to map the item to the Ounce Unit of Measure and provide correct ounce value. Another challenge was how to handle a flight of beer which is several small samples of different beers sold as one unit. We defined flights in GP using kits where we were able to specify the ounces and beer that made up each flight.

Craft brewers have a number of system requirements that are typical of many manufacturers looking to deploy an ERP system: material planning, cradle to grave lot traceability, bar-codes for materials handling, production scheduling, etc. However, there are many business processes that are very unique to this burgeoning industry. As breweries begin to grow in size and sophistication, they encounter an increasing need to start managing and controlling their unique processes within the ERP system, as opposed to relying on manual and home-grown systems.

With eight years of experience working in this arena, Tridea has partnered with our clients to solve a number of these unique challenges by utilizing tools available within the Dynamics ERP software systems. Below are a few examples of requirements that craft brewers may face, along with the solutions to those challenges.

Tracking Barrel Aged Beer

Small batches of special beer creations are often aged in barrels, which may be stored in a warehouse for extended periods of time and even transferred to different locations prior to being packaged and made available for sale. As the size of a “barrel program” grows, it can be challenging to keep track of:

1) What beer is currently stored in which types of barrels?

2) Where the barrels are located?

3) What types of beer have passed through a given barrel in the past? (thus establishing a “flavor profile”)

With Dynamics AX, we have used the concept of “License Plate Numbers” (LPNs) to assign a unique ID to each of these barrels. We can then track the beer that is assigned to an LPN, track the location and movements of the LPN, and also see a history of how many times a barrel has been used and what types of beers were stored in the barrel.

Blending of Batches in a bright tank (“brite tank”)

Bright tanks are where clarified beer is stored after it has been filtered and before it gets bottled or placed in a keg / cask. It is not uncommon for a quantity of beer from one production batch to remain in a bright tank when a new production batch is added to the tank. As a result, two separate batches of beer that would ordinarily be tracked with two distinct lot numbers, have now effectively become blended into a single “combined” batch, which is then packaged and sold to customers. We have developed an automated routine to merge these batch numbers to reflect the blending of the beer in the bright tank, allowing for a more accurate and true lot traceability.

Batch Processing Resulting in the Production of Both Filtered Beer and Unfiltered Beer

In some cases, during the course of producing a filtered beer, a quantity of unfiltered beer is taken out of the tank prior to filtering. Sometimes, this might even be a last-minute decision that is made after the production order has been started. This unfiltered beer might then be barrel-aged or have special ingredients added to it in order to produce a batch of a special limited offering product. Because the process manufacturing functionality within Dynamics AX allows for the creation of co-products on a single production order, we can easily use one production order to produce both the unfiltered and filtered beer, and accurately track them as two distinct products.

Integration to Brewing Systems

Because brewers need to swiftly make decisions about which brew systems, fermentation vessels, and bright tanks to use, it is important for them to interact directly with the ERP system if we are to maintain timely and accurate information about the production process. Leveraging MS Dynamics’ strong integration tools, we have been able to build integration points that can take direct feeds from the brewing system (example: quantities of malt that flow into the brew system from a silo can feed directly to the ERP production order, quantities of filtered beer flowing through a filter outlet into a bright tank are fed directly to the production order). We have also built touch-points allowing for brewers to manually record transactions in the brewery floor systems that then get integrated to the ERP system.

Whether you sell your beer direct to the customer or through distributors, keeping supply even with demand is an ongoing struggle for any craft brewer. For example, you might have that specialty brew that you want to allocate to only your best customers, yet you have no controls over how much of this brew a customer receives from your sale team giving it all away to the wrong customer. Furthermore, how do you take sales forecasts from 200 different customers, then consolidate those forecasts to analyze how much of that style of beer (maybe that specialty beer) you’ll need next month, or in 6 months. Of course, you need someone to sense-check those forecasts that the salesperson has entered to calibrate their optimism for how much they believe they’re going to sell. This forecast can then drive your brewery schedule and raw materials and packaging purchasing. You need to make sure you have enough raw hops and malt to meet this demand, then the right packaging to finish the sellable product. There is a shelf-life to your quality beer, so a delicate balance of brewing just enough beer to meet your demand is ever so important to your industry. Also, how do I net the forecast to what has already been ordered and what has been produced. These are important problems to solve and it takes the right business management system and industry knowledge to address the challenges of supply and demand for the craft brewers industry.